Edelweiss & Dover trip

For Easter break, we travelled to Edelweiss, an armed forces resort in Bavaria, in the heart of the German Alps. This was the view from our room!

The first day there we had lunch on top of Aspspitz, a nearby mountain. The boys loved checking out the skiers.

The next day we took the cogwheel train up the very, very steep tracks to Zugspitze, the highest peak in Germany.

Of course we had to take a family picture at the top!

Miss Christie joined us for part of the trip, and held Noah to see how high we were off the ground when we took the super-high, super-fast cable car back down. I couldn't see out the window, which was probably a good thing.

We spent Easter there, and got this family photo outside the hotel after church. Beautiful scenery!

We spent lots of time, money, and calories tasting German cuisine. We went on a apple strudel hunt, trying it everywhere we could find it. This was in Oberammergau, which is the cutest town ever!

The next day we visited the fairy-tale made reality Neuschwanstein Castle. It was a really, really long walk up the hill to it, but it was amazing to see. It was built for the "Mad" King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Apparently he was just a little on the eccentric side. It has a manmade cave inside of it. Yes, a cave. And apparently the castle was designed by an artist, not an architect... so it was a challenge to build!

It started to snow on us while we were waiting to get in, but it made for some really cool photos.

After our tour of Bavaria, we stopped back up at Ramstein to stay with Christie for a couple of nights. We found this amazing rock wall in their super-mega fancy BX-mall, and of course we had to try it out! N loved climbing, and was awesome. He climbed up over a story until the grips got too far apart for him to reach. Such a monkey!

Daddy climbed too. They had fun.

Then we drove back to England, stopping to spend the day at the newly reopened Dover Castle. The great tower had been completely refurbished to look as it did during the 1100s, and it was really, really neat. Plus the weather was absolutely perfect for photo taking... so I took lots!

This roman lighthouse is the oldest part of the ever evolving Dover Castle complex, it is thought that it was built around 100 A.D. 100! Wow!

I couldn't resist the combination of yellow daffodils (no one does daffodils like the English... wow), a castle, blue sky, and cute kids. I love this picture!

And of course, no trip to Dover would be complete without seeing the white cliffs!

It was an amazing family vacation. We put 1700 miles on the van over the course of 8 days and 4 countries (England, France, Austria, and Germany if you're counting). I love(d) living in Europe!